hilzoy

Kevin Drum reports the following:

“Democrats have been threatening to “bring the Senate to a halt” if Republicans go ahead with plans to eliminate the filibuster, but today the Senate Dems announced a plan to do just the opposite. Via email, Harry Reid’s office announced this afternoon that “As a matter of comity, the Minority in the Senate traditionally defer to the Majority in the setting of the agenda. If Bill Frist pulls the nuclear trigger, Democrats will show deference no longer.” “

What does this mean? Well, Kevin tells us, but I’m going to quote a press release from Sen. Reid instead, since it contains additional details:

“Invoking a little-known Senate procedure called Rule XIV, the Democrats put nine bills on the Senate calendar that seek to help America fulfill its promise.

“Across the country, people are worried about things that matter to their families – the health of their loved ones, their child’s performance in schools, and those sky high gas prices,” said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. “But what is the number one priority for Senate Republicans? Doing away with the last check on one-party rule in Washington to allow President Bush, Senator Frist and Tom Delay to stack the courts with radical judges. If Republicans proceed to pull the trigger on the nuclear option, Democrats will respond by employing existing Senate rules to push forward our agenda for America.””

Below the fold are the nine bills, with Reid’s descriptions; I have added their numbers, and links to the bills’ text.

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by hilzoy

I’ve been mulling over a post on John Bolton for a while, but what with work and all, I only just got around to starting it when I found this article in the Washington Post:

“John R. Bolton — who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

In some cases, career officials found back channels to Powell or his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who encouraged assistant secretaries to bring information directly to him. In other cases, the information was delayed for weeks or simply did not get through. The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Two officials described a memo that had been prepared for Powell at the end of October 2003, ahead of a critical international meeting on Iran, informing him that the United States was losing support for efforts to have the U.N. Security Council investigate Iran’s nuclear program. Bolton allegedly argued that it would be premature to throw in the towel. “When Armitage’s staff asked for information about what other countries were thinking, Bolton said that information couldn’t be collected,” according to one official with firsthand knowledge of the exchange.

Intra-agency tensions are common in Washington, and as the undersecretary of state in charge of nuclear issues, Bolton had a lot of latitude to decide what needed to go to the secretary. But career officials said they often felt that his decisions, and policy views, left the department’s top diplomat uninformed and fed the long-running struggles inside the agency.

Bolton’s time at the State Department under Rice has been brief. But authoritative officials said Bolton let her go on her first European trip without knowing about the growing opposition there to Bolton’s campaign to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear agency. “She went off without knowing the details of what everybody else was saying about how they were not going to join the campaign,” according to a senior official. Bolton has been trying to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is perceived by some within the Bush administration as too soft on Iran.”

This is one instance of a general concern I have about Bolton, which I’ll explain below the fold.

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by hilzoy

Tomorrow Congress will consider whether to make the repeal of the Estate Tax permanent. From the Washington Post:

“WITH MEDICAID and food stamps on the chopping block, the House of Representatives is about to vote for a $290 billion tax break for the richest sliver of Americans. The subject is, once again, the estate tax. Under the convoluted, dishonest plan Congress approved in 2001, the estate tax was to be gradually reduced and eliminated by 2010, only to spring back the following year to its 2001 level: a tax of 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more. Tomorrow the House is set to vote to keep full repeal in place after 2010.

This is unnecessary, irrational and unaffordable. Those who inveigh against the “death tax” point to the travails of family farmers and other small-business owners whose heirs are supposedly forced to liquidate enterprises to pay the tax bill. In fact, even if the estate tax were to revert in 2011 to its 2001 level — and no one believes that the exemption will remain at $1 million — it would affect the estates of only 2 percent of those expected to die that year. At $3.5 million (and $7 million for a couple) — the level proposed in a Democratic alternative sponsored by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.) — a mere three-tenths of 1 percent of estates would be covered. In other words, no one but the richest Americans would be asked to pay estate tax.

Moreover, an analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center supports the contention that the family forced to sell its farm to pay the tax is, if not a fiction, close to it. Looking at situations in which farm and business assets represent most of the estate, the Tax Policy Center found that there would be just 50 affected in 2011 in the entire country if the exemption were set at $3.5 million.

The true cost of repeal is far higher than $290 billion, an amount that covers only the first few years of making repeal permanent. The bill for a full 10 years without estate tax would be $745 billion — close to $1 trillion if you throw in increased interest payments. In contrast, raising the exemption level to $3.5 million and setting the tax rate at 47 percent would cost less than a third of that; $21 billion in 2015 compared to $71 billion for full repeal. The effective rate would be far less than 47 percent, because the tax is levied only on the amount above the exemption and state payments and charitable bequests also reduce the tab.

The estate tax is a tough vote for some lawmakers in part because of the enormous amount of misinformation surrounding it. House members who fear that a vote for the more responsible Pomeroy alternative will be used against them should ask themselves two questions: Will my constituents really punish me for a vote to exempt 99.7 percent of estates from taxation? And how can I justify adding to the deficit, or cutting other programs, to underwrite a costly tax break for the extremely rich?”

Making the repeal of the estate tax permanent would be wrong on a number of counts, which I will summarize below.

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From Marketwatch (subscription required):

“The Bush administration has spent millions of dollars in the past two months on its campaign to overhaul Social Security, narrowly skirting laws that prohibit spending of taxpayer funds to indirectly lobby Congress.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and more than 20 other administration officials have blanketed the country since early February, delivering more than 100 speeches in 37 states in an effort to rally the public behind Bush’s Social Security plans.

Although no hard figures on costs are available, rough calculations show the White House and other agencies have spent at least $2.2 million on the campaign so far.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has been asked by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to investigate the costs of the pro-privatization effort. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have also asked quietly for an accounting, according to the Washington Post.

Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, asked the GAO to determine whether “the Bush administration has crossed the line from education to propaganda.”

Federal law prohibits spending any public funds for publicity or propaganda designed to support or defeat legislation pending in Congress. (…)

Bush himself has spoken at 25 events in 20 states on the topic since his State of the Union address in early February. According to press reports, Bush’s audiences are carefully screened to exclude those expressing disapproval of his plans.

Twenty-two other administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary John Snow, three other Cabinet secretaries and four top officials at the Social Security Administration, have been on the road talking up the need to overhaul Social Security.

All told, officials in the White House and other executive agencies have delivered 120 speeches in 37 states. The Bush administration is well on its way to its goal of visiting 60 cities in 60 days with the Social Security reform message.”

I don’t know about you, but I resent having the President spend my tax dollars lobbying for his Social Security proposal. I also mind this (from the same article): ” “He’s devoting two days a week to it,” said White House spokeswoman Martin.” That’s not two days a week working on Social Security issues; it’s two days a week traveling around giving speeches about the plan he has yet to put forward. And I mind those 22 other officials who are doing the same thing. It’s not as though actually running the federal government leaves one with a lot of free time. It’s not as though there aren’t other problems to deal with.

If that weren’t enough, there’s also the fact that I, along with the rest of the large majority of Americans who do not support the President’s approach, would be barred from attending the speeches he is spending my money giving. (How he intends to convince people when he bars all those who don’t already support him from coming to his speeches, I can’t imagine.) I think it’s cowardly not to face those who disagree with him, but unconscionable to use our money to pay for speeches we will only be allowed to attend if we share his views. He’s welcome to do that if he’s spending his own campaign funds, but he should not do it on my nickel.

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